Yellow not Mellow

Insisting that many taxi medallion owners are facing financial ruin due to the decline in medallion values, yellow cab drivers and their backers rallied in force at City Hall on May 3.

The drivers slammed the city for allowing ride-app companies like Uber and Lyft to create unfair competition, and for failing to protect the value of medallions.

In March, a taxi medallion sold for around $250,000, a 70 percent drop in value from 2014 when medallions were selling for over $1.1 million apiece.

“We were told it was a safe investment,” said Nino Hervais, who has driven a yellow cab for the past 34 years. “We have invested everything we have in order to make this our living.”

At the rally, drivers announced they have filed a lawsuit against the city, the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) and its Commissioner Meera Joshi.

Is the yellow cab the ride of the past?

The suit contends that the city sold medallions on the premise that they conveyed an exclusive right to pick up passengers on the street.

Medallion owners fumed that Uber cabs have flooded the streets, operated by owners that did not have to pay a hefty fee for the right to pick up fares.

“If you pay a hundred dollars for a steak dinner, and someone brought you a ham sandwich, wouldn’t you be upset?” asked Sergio Cabrera, a medallion owner from Washington Heights. “So, if I pay to pick up on the streets of New York, and they allow someone else to do it for free, don’t you think I have the right to be upset?

“To me, it’s like a bad dream,” Cabrera added. “There’s a lot of our medallion owners who are not going to be around.”

“The TLC has closed their eyes over the last three years, closed their ears, to their responsibility,” stated Brad Gerstman, an attorney representing cab drivers in the lawsuit. “It’s a total dereliction of duty, allowing 70,000 Uber cars onto the streets.”

Competition has been fierce.

The suit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, asks that the city enforce its standards to ensure all medallion owners remain “financially stable.”

Many drivers said that they are unable to afford payments on loans used to buy their medallions, and can no longer use medallions as collateral.

“I invested everything for this medallion,” said Ravinder Singh, a cab driver from Queens. “Now I am in danger of losing my home.”

“Many lenders are refusing to renew, because of the uncertainty of the market, even for those who have never missed their payments,” added driver Satender Singh, who asked that banks allow drivers to restructure loans.

“We are slowly going to go away,” he remarked. “Please help us.”

Drivers appealed to Governor Andrew Cuomo for assistance in the form of a financial bailout or by ordering a freeze on medallion foreclosures.

“I invested everything for this medallion,” said Ravinder Singh (center) with fellow cabbies.

The number of foreclosures increased from 10 in 2014 to 36 last year, according to the Taxi Medallion Owner Association, which issued a letter to Cuomo, imploring him to step in.

“Back us, do whatever it is to keep us afloat, keep the medallions afloat,” appealed Gerstman to Cuomo. “Force the banks to renegotiate with us.”

Gerstman said that the declining state of the yellow cab industry is harming immigrants, who make up more than 90 percent of the city’s independent cab owners.

“New York City promised to stand behind you in the sale of that medallion,” Gerstman shouted to drivers at the rally. “That you can work hard, play by the rules, and as a result, you will then benefit and have a life. And now they’re just talking that away. And how are they doing that? They’re doing it by abject mismanagement.”

“We have come from all over the world to better our life, in search of the American Dream,” said Hervais. “But instead, we’re finding the American nightmare.”

At City Hall.

In response to the lawsuit, Joshi pointed out that the city had made efforts to support medallion owners, including lowering the transfer tax on sale of a medallion, which previously totaled tens of thousands of dollars, and eliminating the mandate that owners must personally drive their taxi over 150 shifts a year.

“It’s a total dereliction of duty,” said attorney Brad Gerstman.

She said the advent of TLC’s ride-hail apps could be a boon to yellow cab operators.

“The city’s taxi industry continues to advance technologically, including the creation of two taxi apps for passengers who prefer to arrange a trip through a smartphone,” Joshi said in a statement. “With such a well-known, global brand — the yellow taxi — there is great opportunity for both longtime and new businesses to use technology to improve customer service.”

Cabrera said that city lawmakers have the power to help medallion owners.

“This is a crisis that has been created, because the politicians in charge of following these rules have not done that,” he stated. “They have actually bent the rules so that other companies have an easier way into the market. They can fix it tomorrow.”

Cabrera, who has driven a yellow cab since coming from the Dominican Republic more than 20 years ago, said the city has an obligation to protect its yellow cabs and the immigrants who operate them.

“Yellow cabs are the only ones that are regulated in fare, in where to go. They’re painted yellow for a reason – you can find us, you can trust us,” he said. “The city is letting the people of New York down.”